ABSTRACT
It seems that not only the latent anti-Semitism which pervaded much of pre-war academic life in Germany accounted for the shabby treatment Simmel received from the academic powers, but also his refusal to limit himself to a narrow area of scholarly work certainly did not meet the standards of a great many spirits in the academic world. Moreover, Simmel demonstrated a breadth of culture, a sparkling intellect, and an ability to move with great ease from one topic to another in both his public lectures and his publications and thus might have posed a threat to some and at least affronted other colleagues and superiors. His academic isolation, his multi-disciplinary interests, in turn, together with his original concern with a study of individuals within groups
Simmel's works are formulated against the background of the two main theories of society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the mechanical-atomistic, and the organic theories. The atom is tic theory emphasized the autonomy of the individual and his inherent reason as the determinants of be ha vi or. Individuals were conceived of as independent and self-sustaining units and the community was defined as their mechanical summation. The foundations of social life as the product of reason, were natural rights. The organismic theory, on the other hand, saw society in a holistic manner, with a reality in its own right, something distinct from and opposing the individual. 3
Simmel's system of sociology attempted a new interpretation of the nature of society in that it brought the concepts of relation and function into the picture. He recognized the inadequacy of the group-mind aspect of the organismic theory and the superficiality of the atomistic approach. To him, society appeared as a function of relations among individuals and of interactions between individual minds. Society was thus conceived as an inter-human reality, to which Simmel had assigned all the 'with-one-another, against-one-another, and through-one-another' relationships. Society, then was not something which either was or was not, but rather, it was something that happened. Society was a process.4
